In her beautiful book ‘lighted windows’ Margaret Silf tells the story of the little match girl as an analogy for the Advent journey. It’s a story we all know very well of the little girl who made her living by selling matches. One night she stood in her usual place shivering with cold, afraid of what the night might bring. She began to look into the lighted windows of the big houses all around her.

She saw beautiful things that she had never experienced. People laughing with one another as they wrapped presents and decorated Christmas trees. A far cry from the slum she lived in with her stepfather waiting to take what little money she earned and mete out a beating if it wasn’t enough. She looked and she smiled at the happy excited faces of children no older than herself. Suddenly she was no longer afraid of what might be.

There were no customers this night, they all had other things on their minds. With trepidation she took out a match and struck it, gazing for a few brief moments into its blaze of light. As she did so, she imagined that it was one of the windows of the big houses she stood opposite. She looked with her imagination into the bright light and found herself in a warm comfortable room. She lit another match and gazed again, another scene another window to look into. She continued to light her matches and to escape from the misery she lived in until she came to the last match in the box.

As she strikes the last one the little match girl sees a falling star in the sky and her grandmother standing there smiling, welcoming. The next morning the frozen child is discovered with an empty matchbox and a deep contented smile across her white face. Her fear and anxiety have finally been conquered. The advent journey invites us to share something of the magic and the mystery of what it means to look into lighted windows: not the windows of fantasy like the little match girl but windows that will lead us deeply into the mystery that is God who invites us not to be afraid. So many of us seem to live life afraid of what will be, afraid of what has been, afraid to live. Our fears cause us to become aggressive and partisan. We blame and scapegoat those who are different than we are. We take refuge in being right and having truth on our side when sometimes we are simply hiding our vulnerability and need. Maybe Advent is a time to prepare ourselves to hear the voice of the one who comes that we might live free from fear and saved from the hands of our enemies. Maybe we need to look through lighted windows.

Don’t waste this precious time by simply preparing for Christmas. Take time every day to look through the lighted windows that are given to us so that we can find the overwhelming presence of God. Look through lighted windows and recognise the ever coming God who was born in a stable at Bethlehem. He is born within us every moment of every day, if we only care to recognise that coming and remember he came that we might live free from fear and saved from the hands of our enemies.